New solar power material converts 90 percent of captured light into heat

October 29, 2014

Engineers at UC San Diego have developed a nanoparticle-based material for concentrating solar power plants that converts 90% of captured sunlight to heat. With particle sizes ranging from 10 nanometers to 10 micrometers, the multiscale structure traps and absorbs light more efficiently and at temperatures greater than 700 degrees Celsius. Credit: Renkun Chen, mechanical engineering professor, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

A multidisciplinary engineering team at the University of California, San Diego developed a new nanoparticle-based material for concentrating solar power plants designed to absorb and convert to heat more than 90 percent of the sunlight it captures. The new material can also withstand temperatures greater than 700 degrees Celsius and survive many years outdoors in spite of exposure to air and humidity. Their work, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's SunShot program, was published recently in two separate articles in the journal Nano Energy.

By contrast, current solar absorber material functions at lower temperatures and needs to be overhauled almost every year for high temperature operations.

"We wanted to create a material that absorbs sunlight that doesn't let any of it escape. We want the black hole of sunlight," said Sungho Jin, a professor in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Jin, along with professor Zhaowei Liu of the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering professor Renkun Chen, developed the Silicon boride-coated nanoshell material. They are all experts in functional materials engineering.

The novel material features a "multiscale" surface created by using particles of many sizes ranging from 10 nanometers to 10 micrometers. The multiscale structures can trap and absorb light which contributes to the material's high efficiency when operated at higher temperatures.

Concentrating solar power (CSP) is an emerging alternative clean energy market that produces approximately 3.5 gigawatts worth of power at power plants around the globe—enough to power more than 2 million homes, with additional construction in progress to provide as much as 20 gigawatts of power in coming years. One of the technology's attractions is that it can be used to retrofit existing power plants that use coal or fossil fuels because it uses the same process to generate electricity from steam.

Traditional power plants burn coal or fossil fuels to create heat that evaporates water into steam. The steam turns a giant turbine that generates electricity from spinning magnets and conductor wire coils. CSP power plants create the steam needed to turn the turbine by using sunlight to heat molten salt. The molten salt can also be stored in thermal storage tanks overnight where it can continue to generate steam and electricity, 24 hours a day if desired, a significant advantage over photovoltaic systems that stop producing energy with the sunset.

UC San Diego mechanical engineering professor Renkun Chen spray paints a novel material designed that could significantly improve the cost competitiveness of solar energy by converting more than 90 percent of the sunlight it captures into heat. Funded by the US Department of Energy's SunShot Initiative, the team is tasked with coming up with a material that can last for years in the air and humidity before it needs to be repainted, a feat the team believes it is close to achieving. Credit: David Baillot/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering

One of the most common types of CSP systems uses more than 100,000 reflective mirrors to aim sunlight at a tower that has been spray painted with a light absorbing black paint material. The material is designed to maximize sun light absorption and minimize the loss of light that would naturally emit from the surface in the form of infrared radiation.

The UC San Diego team's combined expertise was used to develop, optimize and characterize a new material for this type of system over the past three years. Researchers included a group of UC San Diego graduate students in materials science and engineering, Justin Taekyoung Kim, Bryan VanSaders, and Jaeyun Moon, who recently joined the faculty of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The synthesized nanoshell material is spray-painted in Chen's lab onto a metal substrate for thermal and mechanical testing. The material's ability to absorb sunlight is measured in Liu's optics laboratory using a unique set of instruments that takes spectral measurements from visible light to infrared.

Graduate student Bryan VanSaders measures how much simulated sunlight a novel material can absorb using a unique set of instruments that takes spectral measurements from visible to infrared. This testing is led by electrical engineering professor Zhaowei Liu. Credit: David Baillot/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

Current CSP plants are shut down about once a year to chip off the degraded sunlight absorbing material and reapply a new coating, which means no power generation while a replacement coating is applied and cured. That is why DOE's SunShot program challenged and supported UC San Diego research teams to come up with a material with a substantially longer life cycle, in addition to the higher operating temperature for enhanced energy conversion efficiency. The UC San Diego research team is aiming for many years of usage life, a feat they believe they are close to achieving.

Modeled after President Kennedy's moon landing program that inspired widespread interest in science and space exploration, then-Energy Secretary Steven P. Chu launched the Sunshot Initiative in 2010 with the goal of making solar power cost competitive with other means of producing electricity by 2020.

Parabolic troughs and dry-cooled towers deliver similar value for concentrating solar power (CSP) plants, despite different solar profiles, a new report by the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory has ...

The key to creating a material that would be ideal for converting solar energy to heat is tuning the material's spectrum of absorption just right: It should absorb virtually all wavelengths of light that reach Earth's surface ...

Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) projects would add additional value of 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt hour to utility-scale solar energy in California where 33 percent renewables will be mandated in six years, a new report by ...

If the current national challenge to make solar energy cost competitive with other forms of energy by the end of this decade is met, Ranga Pitchumani, the John R. Jones III Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia ...

On the theory that a driver who knows when a red light will turn green is more relaxed and aware, vehicle manufacturer Audi is unveiling this week in Las Vegas a technology that enables vehicles to "read" traffic signals ...

There you are, cruising down the freeway, listening to some tunes and enjoying the view as your autonomous car zips and swerves through traffic. Then the fun ends and it becomes time take over the wheel. How smooth is that ...

One of the technology's attractions is that it can be used to retrofit existing power plants that use coal or fossil fuels

Within reason. Solar collector powerplants have a largeish footprint. (Coal powerplants are by no means small, but I'd hazard that such a conversion only works for really free-standing types with plenty of additional area for mirrors)The conversion argument could be applied to nuclear powerplants as well.

How can this be applied to nukes? They do not work on radiant energy the same way.

Neither do coal powerplants. The idea is to simply remove the boilers and replace them with a solar concentrator tower and a field of mirrors to retrofit the steam turbines of the plant to use solar heat - essentially recycling and rebuilding the entire facility into a CSP plant.

The retrofit idea is really not relevant to the point here, nor is this technology essential and necessary to retrofit an powerplant because the older solar concentrator technology works just fine.

It's just ad-hoc filler to the article because the writer felt the invention wasn't impressive enough as it was.

(and nuclear powerplants usually have largish areas around them for security and radiation reasons.... though they're not quite as easy to level as coal power plants. One might have to site the converter atop the biological shield)

The conversion argument could be applied to nuclear powerplants as well.

Solar concentrator fields are too small for the size of turbines in a nuclear powerplant, unless it's a particularily small nuclear powerplant. The conversion wouldn't be very efficient, because you'd be running the turbines at around 10% of their design capacity.

The bigger the turbine, the bigger the heat loss, and the more energy you need just to make it turn, so unless you can supply it with the same 3-4 GW of heat as the reactor you're replacing, you're better off just building a whole new facility right next to it with appropriately sized parts.

The largest CSP facility at the moment is Ivanpah in the Mojave Desert, California, with three boiler towers each with their own field of mirrors, coupled to three steam turbines of approximately 130 MW capacity each for a combined nominal output of 377 MW. They take a combined area of 14 square kilometers.

If the heliostats were built around a single tower, they would spread out over a distance of 2 kilometers, which is too far away to concentrate the light, which is why the system is split into three boilers and three turbines.

With a turbine designed for 1000 MW instead of 100 MW output, the ex-nuclear powerplant simply couldn't surround itself with enough mirrors to run it.

Eikka, it was with great restraint that I did not ask the operators where the electrician was when he dropped the lightbulb into the controls, shorting out the cooling systems, and wny many generators failed to start. I was in that control room (very small), and actually looked for the sign on the carpet where the manager got too excited, hyperventilated,,and passed out, hitting his head. He was the sole person responsible for operation at the time.

The Ranch was a TMI clone, by B & W, with very little room for error, and the Ranch had many, many errors and near-disasters with cooling. The people shut it down, wanting to pay for it and not use it. It was a good decision, made with other factors than economics involved to balance out the greed factor.

Eikka, it was with great restraint that I did not ask the operators where the electrician was when he dropped the lightbulb into the controls, shorting out the cooling systems, and wny many generators failed to start. I was in that control room (very small), and actually looked for the sign on the carpet where the manager got too excited, hyperventilated,,and passed out, hitting his head. He was the sole person responsible for operation at the time.

There were other mismanagement problems in the Rancho Seco, due to SMUD's inability to pay for proper maintenance and training of staff, which lead to constant shutdowns over minor malfunctions.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has named Rancho Seco as among 10 U.S. "problem plants," according to documents released earlier this month by a House of Representatives subcommittee. It says the plant has one of the worst efficiency ratings of any in the nation.

Federal investigations have found a history of mismanagement, poor or non-existent maintenance, poor operator training, inattention to detail, failure to learn from past mistakes and manipulation of radioactive measurements to allow discharge of contaminated waste water.

Still, the plant provided half of the power to SMUD ratepayers and cost less than importing the power from elsewhere.

No hearsay, Otto, I looked all that up while I was working on the tests of GE Mark I & II BWR SRV's. Then I followed it as it progressed to the eventual closing. It was shut down, but still fueled and generating a few megawatts of heat while I was there.

Yes, but they realized it was not worth the risk of contaminating the entire San Joaquin Valley.

Well, the risk was entirely in their own mismanagement of the plant. The frequent shutdowns for example created the need to drain the cooling system every time, which created the need to dump radioactive water, which the appointed leaders lied they didn't.

Although in one sense, it was perfectly reasonable for the public to realize that they're just too incompetent to run an utility to run a nuclear powerplant.

Imagine if the plant had been properly supervised and maintained. Just goes back to the point that you can't blame the gun for shooting someone. Point the finger at the person holding it.

Btw. The Rancho Seco also represents a cleanly decommissioned nuclear powerplant. Everything except the concrete cooling towers and the spent fuel pool have been removed from the premises and the area around it restored for public use.

If it didn't cause such a large row among the anti-nuclear crowd, they could move the spent fuel away too, and blow up the towers. There'd be nothing left of it.

Where are you going to put the radwaste? Are you up with what is happening at Hanford and WIPP?

Reprocess and re-use it.

Bury the rest. Re-fund Yucca Mountain perhaps? There are plenty of places where the final deposit would be adequately safe for all intents and purposes - the problem is the politics, and the people for whom only the perfect and perfecly impossible is enough.

How about Fukushima? Look up the trembling volcano near the Sendai plant.

Both are a result of refusing to process the nuclear waste or put it away for good. Neither is going to happen until the anti-nuclear crowd gives the OK to do something about the matter and stops arguing and propagandizing against any and all solutions.

The reason to the staunch opposition is, that any solution to those problems would also defeat the main objection against commercial nuclear power production. If WIPP and Hanford, or the numerous other stores of waste weren't there - if we actually did something about them - the opposition couldn't point out that nuclear waste is a problem, so nothing must be done.

Tell me how you are going to store it. It is a technical problem. It eats through the tanks we put it in.

Leaking containers aren't really an issue if the site is safe enough that the waste won't turn up in a few thousand years, and if the waste is stable enough that it won't migrate in the first place. Power reactor waste can be stabilized like that by melting it into glass.

A major problem we're having now is that the nuclear waste we're trying to bury is the huge backlog of military and research waste from nuclear weapons, which isn't stable or chemically inert, and the only sites currently (politically) available like WIPP are less than safe for those kinds of wastes.

You really must look into Hanford and the terrible problems we will have from it.

Hanford was a site for the Manhattan project dedicated for producing plutonium for nuclear weapons. It's a shame, but really has little to do with commercial nuclear power generation.

Sorry, but vitrification does not work in practicality, no matter the theory. We find the particles form points of nucleation for crystallization, leading to fractures and exposure of the contents to the water drawn to it by the thermal plumes, which dissolves some of it, carries it to the surface, and takes it it away with the wind. That is what happened in the tests.

No hearsay, Otto, I looked all that up while I was working on the tests of GE Mark I & II BWR SRV's. Then I followed it as it progressed to the eventual closing. It was shut down, but still fueled and generating a few megawatts of heat while I was there.

Train drivers do not necessarily know how the railroad is run. You seem to mistake your presence at the facility as evidence that you are privy to privileged info. We have no evidence of either now do we?

When you say 'follow' do you mean following gossip around the lunchroom table? Youve already misrepresented yourself as an engineer. Eikka seems to have caught you misrepresenting facts above.

You like to invent lies like plutonium raining down on idaho. And you seem to enjoy using inflammatory buzzwords when discussing nuclear power, which are easy to discount.

Sorry, but vitrification does not work in practicality, no matter the theory.

Nirvana fallacy. It doesn't have to work absolutely perfectly to be adequate. We do not need to eliminate, but simply minimize the release of material to the point that it's not a hazard.

The linear no-treshold model for radiation exposure effects is false.

dissolves some of it, carries it to the surface, and takes it it away with the wind. That is what happened in the tests.

This is where the safety of the deposit location comes in. We minimize the release, and then minimize the migration of the waste, and call it good enough. If there is no effective harm to the population, what's the problem?

It should also be noted that 2/3 of the high level nuclear waste in the US comes from the nuclear weapons program, and exists in the highly problematic liquid form because it was never processed further.

Yay, they got it to work.A larger array should be strong enough to work off star light. Add that to the ability to turn light into matter (link below)http://phys.org/n...est.htmlInterstellar travel, even if it's 1/5th the speed of light.

OK, lux is weighted by wavelength as opposed to watt per square meter...but the figures are in the same ballpark)

So a powerplant working off starlight will have to be about 1.6 to 5 million times larger opposed to the kind looking at the sun direct.(i.e. to get the power of a 1km direct sunlight solar farm you'd have to plaster something like a quarter to half the the area of the united states with mirrors...I'm not sure we're quiiiite there yet to put something like that into space.)

Production of nuclear weapons is very different from production of reactor fuel, or reprocessing of that fuel, or storing the spent fuel without reprocessing it. Naturally, this means that the waste is very different, too. The US would have a much lower inventory of nuclear waste if we reprocessed. But the anti-nuke hysterics keep blocking it, then claiming that nuclear waste is a "huge problem." If it's such a huge problem, how come you're blocking efforts to address it?

And in response to Eikka's well-documented posts about what really happened at Rancho Seco, you've posted anecdote. "Evidence" is not the plural of anecdote. Sorry, you'll need better evidence to support your position. And that's not something I generally have to remind people like you of. You're off-track, gkam.

Somehow, currently there is no widespread use of Solar Panels & Wind Turbines outside in the fields yet in the Modern World. Similarly, Algae for Biofuel sector is also lagging far behind. Only way to succeed in adopting Renewable Energy is to make a 3-Storey System incorporating all the three in the same place; Initially, it will tend to be a real mess. But it can be improved with better & better ideas! Solar Panels can later be moved atop the fans in distant future. Algal lakes in which are installed tall turbines with Solar panels branching out from the stems of the tall turbines is the perfect pill for the prevailing ailment! Once installed, no one gives a damn for the stem of the tall turbines. It is true that the Wind Turbines only work at great heights because of the needed wind speeds. Any future Repairs will be needed for the fans at the top only...which can certainly be easily reached using helicopters. The Solar Panels may be moved atop the fans in distant future later on.

"The US would have a much lower inventory of nuclear waste if we reprocessed. But the anti-nuke hysterics keep blocking it, then claiming that nuclear waste is a "huge problem." If it's such a huge problem, how come you're blocking efforts to address it?"----------------------------------------------------Why do I have to respond to ridiculous charges? Nobody is blocking it but reality. There is NO way to make nuclear waste non-radioactive. None. It is already concentrated, and more concentration can lead to self-criticality, as it obviously did at Fukushima after the meltdown.

Show me one place for long-term storage on any nuclear waste that is successful. How do you get the idea you can load your nasty stuff on Humanity forever? What kind of character does it take to do that to the rest of Humanity?

Eikka cut and pasted, I gave you my own experience. You chose what was in line with your own biases.

Why do I have to respond to ridiculous charges? Nobody is blocking it but reality. There is NO way to make nuclear waste non-radioactive. None. It is already concentrated, and more concentration can lead to self-criticality, as it obviously did at Fukushima after the meltdown.

That's because it was still mostly fuel, combined with plutonium. Japan does not reprocess.

Show me one place for long-term storage on any nuclear waste that is successful.

We could immediately reduce the inventory of waste to 1/10 of its current amount by reprocessing. Right now, if we had the facilities. Furthermore it would not be fissile waste, and something like Fukushima could never happen.

Eikka cut and pasted, I gave you my own experience. You chose what was in line with your own biases.

No, I saw links and quotes from Eikka. And anecdote from you, and incorrect anecdote at that.

That article sums up an entire history of happenings there. The dropped bulb shorted out the cooling system. That is called a fault. When it happened, they waited for the relays to click and to start the Emergency Core Cooling System, but it cranked until it failed. The second back up was cranked and cranked and cranked until its batteries were out, and it failed. The third and last one cranked and came on, saving the San Joaquin Valley.

Eikka will love it when I tell him while as Plant Engineer for a large iron foundry, we cast the engine blocks for the 10,500 hp diesels for DeLaval nuclear ECCS.

"We could immediately reduce the inventory of waste to 1/10 of its current amount by reprocessing. Right now, if we had the facilities. Furthermore it would not be fissile waste, and something like Fukushima could never happen."-------------------------------------------------

If you concentrate it any more, it can go critical. You cannot make it non-radioactive. What'cha gonna do?

Do you seriously believe that? Plutonium and many other actinides are both.

So far, one isotope of plutonium, one isotope of uranium, and one isotope of thorium have been identified as fissile. That sounds like "three," not "many."

Furthermore, high level radioactive waste is generally fission products; that is, elements with half the mass (more or less) of the original actinide nucleus. How many fissile isotopes are there in that? Hint: zero. There aren't any fissile isotopes below thorium.

And when one spits out a Neutron, it just may cause fission in such material.

Neutron emission is not a recognized or detected form of radioactivity. Do you have extraordinary evidence to support this extraordinary claim?

And the lightbulb story is true. I should tell you about the last time they trusted them, and the event that pushed them over the edge.

I'll also point out that even if you are right, and it was a light bulb, that's a design flaw. It sounds like this brand of reactor has lots of design flaws, for example lack of pipe supports, a typical contractor shortcut found in many houses, for example exposed electrical wiring that can be shorted by a light bulb or other debris, for example lack of a testing regime for the emergency generators, shall I continue?

This appears to be a problem with this particular builder. I'd say you've made a great case for not letting them build any more nuclear reactors, but there are quite a few competitors whose reactors haven't had these kinds of problems. Why do you want to shut them down too? Guilt by association?

Seriously, what kind of idiot puts wires that can be shorted out in the middle of a crucial emergency system?

"Seriously, what kind of idiot puts wires that can be shorted out in the middle of a crucial emergency system?"----------------------------Look up Brown's Ferry.

Meanwhile, the tests I did were on the Safety Relief Valves of GE Mark I &II BWR's which are also unsafe, as we saw in Fukushima. We have lots of stories of breeder failures, from SL-1 and Fermi I to Monju and others.

I should correct this: there are in fact other fissile isotopes, but their half-lives are so short that they do not form enough of the mass of the waste to ever become a critical mass, and they never will. These short half-lives ensure that they decay into something else before they can concentrate.

And I was wrong; there is a long-lived isotope below thorium's weight that is fissile: technetium-99.

Note that there is no technetium on Earth but that created by fission. Its half-life is too short. That's why it's called "technetium;" it has no stable isotopes and thus can only be created in the lab. A few special stars have technetium in them; they are using a fusion reaction that creates it on the spot. But its short half-life means that by the time those stars explode, there will be very little technetium, and by the time their remnants have re-concentrated into a gas and dust cloud that forms a star, there is none left.

Brown's Ferry was the warning that we'd better have oversight on these contractors. Do you recall the final cause? It turned out to be a welder who'd created the problem and tried to cover it up.

The warning was ignored.

But that's not a problem with nuclear reactors, any more than it's a problem with climate change. It's a political and social problem. Are you going to try to ban sunlight because it's creating global warming? Again, guilt by association.

"Fission is not radioactive decay." Why the strawman? We already know fission is from Neutron emission, and often from other fissions. Radioactive decay is from the weak force, and also changes the Nucleus through the loss of mass/energy.

Do you know there is evidence of high Neutron flux from one of the three Fukushima Meltdowns?

The point is we need none of the Nuclear Priesthood promising us this time it will be different, that they have a new design that is actually safe.

More guilt by association. The hydrogen that caused the explosions that breached the containments didn't come from the reactors at all, which means that the BWRs, and the valves you mentioned prior to this statement, had nothing to do with the Fukushima disaster. It was the stored spent fuel that caused it, and you said so yourself earlier in this thread.

No, it was from an electrician looking to seal air leaks in cable pass-throughs.

As a utility engineer, I paid attention to these events, having gotten the testing experience, and got my information from professional sources, as well as others such as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

" It was the stored spent fuel that caused it, and you said so yourself earlier in this thread. "

Nope. Unit Three is credited with a prompt criticality caused perhaps from the hydrogen explosion. Look at the difference between the hydrogen explosions of another unit and the Unit Three detonation. Cobalt 60 was found it Fukushima Dai-ini, kilometers away, which is an activation product wherein Neutrons turn the Iron to Cobalt.

So you want to change the subject away from your appalling lack of knowledge of nuclear physics.

Yet without a good grounding in this, you pretend to know all about nuclear reactors.

I am interpreting this as you avoiding the real facts. I pay attention to the Union of Concerned Scientists, who are not hysterical, but who do not accept that idiot contractors without oversight are a correct method for building nuclear plants.

Unit Three is credited with a prompt criticality caused perhaps from the hydrogen explosion.

"Caused perhaps from the hydrogen explosion."

Ummm, yep. The containments weren't solidly enough engineered to resist the explosion; we're lucky that it was only one reactor that did this, if that's what happened.

We already did this once. The spent fuel rods have zirconium cladding and if it gets hot it makes hydrogen. They're immersed in water inside the containment, outside the reactor vessel. The water is cooled to keep this reaction that makes hydrogen from happening. The reactors shut down, requiring the use of emergency diesel generators to keep the waste cool. The diesel generators failed to do so and the hydrogen accumulated and exploded.

It wasn't the reactors. It was the waste. Unprocessed waste. Waste that would either not have been there, or would have not been fissile, if it had been processed. It also wouldn't have been clad with zirconium any more after reprocessing. And there would have been an order of magnitude less waste. So maybe the diesel generators that did work could have avoided the accident; in any case, there's no reason to expect an explosion, since there would be no hydrogen, because there would be no zirconium.

BTW, you're right about Brown's Ferry, it was a candle, not a welding torch- but it turned out there had been a similar accident that was caused by a welding torch earlier. It was pre-commissioning, so they covered up the fact that the seals were flammable.

All that happened after the reactor events. I follow this closely, having worked with those systems in test, (not with the reactor).

BTW, I was in the control room of the Ranch as a parent of a schoolkid acting as chaperone. It was still fueled and guarded (we went through all the checks), but shut down for power generation, with only decay heat (and nuclear waste), with which to deal.

I don't remember my source; it was either a Frontline or 60 Minutes episode, IIRC. During the construction, a fire broke out in a similar seal made of identical material and was covered up; the fire was caused by a welding torch several feet away.

We had a problem with quality control, and a problem with control system vulnerabilities, not a problem with nuclear plants. Nuclear engineers have been pointing this out for decades.

In fact this is not the only high tech system that has been bedeviled by contractor problems. The origin of Murphy's Law was a USAF Captain named Ed Murphy, who commented that if there was a way for the contractor on his project to wire their assembly wrong, they'd find it.

1. Plutonium is not raining down on Idaho.2. Scientists and engineers know how to concentrate and store radioactive waste without the danger of going critical.3. Low level validation techs and chaperones are not usually privy to operational details of nuke plants. People who cite this experience as evidence that they are, have even less cred.4. YOURE NOT AN ENGINEER. Quit claiming that you are.5. There's another thread for the virgin explosion.

Ummm, gkam, radiation doesn't make other things radioactive. Only neutrons do that, and neutrons are not emitted by radioactive nuclei. Neutrons are emitted by fission, not radioactivity. Alpha and beta are, respectively, helium nuclei and electrons. Gamma is photons. Some isotopes emit positrons, AKA anti-electrons; they're rare and have a short half-life. That's about it.

The equipment that is used to concentrate and separate the waste products can be re-used indefinitely. It doesn't get more radioactive with each use. It gets as radioactive as it's ever going to be after the first use, and then nothing more happens.

The US policy to not reprocess is driven by three things: 1. We have lots of uranium ore. It's much cheaper to make fuel from that than from reprocessing.2. Reprocessing exposes plutonium, which in addition to being a fuel metal, is also a nuclear weapon metal. The US does not wish to add to stocks of plutonium. 3. The reaction of the anti-nuke hysterics to reprocessing would be a political nightmare.

The ONLY advantage to reprocessing is reducing the amount of waste; the only offset is the recovery of usable fuel. In other words, it exclusively benefits future generations. If that's who you really want to help.

The French figured it out and are testing their conclusions in a very open manner, right now. Of course, they have less than 1/10 of the problem the US does, since they've always reprocessed. And their waste contains no fissiles, so they can concentrate it as much as they like.

Worth noting that these "dumps" may become "mines" later; we don't know what to do with this stuff now, but there are a number of applications for such radioactive elements already known, and doubtless more to come. France has recognized this and emphasizes that these are not "dumps," they're "storage facilities," with "inventory." This was a wise move. They're not going to dump it and leave it; they'll be there to tend it later.

The French figured it out and are testing their conclusions in a very open manner, right now.

Not quite. According to a documentary from 2009 the French are handing their radioactive waste over to the russians for reprocessing (in Swerensk). Of the material 10% is handed back as reprocessed. The rest is stored in Swerensk. ...and by "stored" they mean : leave it lying around under the clear blue sky without even a tarp over it.

Now I don't know...but 'dealing with it' is something else in my vocabulary.

(BTW. Germany also hands over a lot of its nuclear waste material to the russians to be similarly treated)

Worth mentioning that France has a huge reprocessing facility in Normandy, at a place called La Hague. It is therefore an extraordinary claim that they are sending their reprocessing to Russia. I'll want to see extraordinary evidence for this extraordinary claim.

Show me how to concentrate the waste without making more waste, and leaving a radioactive processing system, which is more waste

Well if youre not able to understand that "Scientists and engineers know how to concentrate and store radioactive waste without the danger of its going critical" then why would anyone expect you to understand how to concentrate nuclear waste? And why would they want to waste their time trying to explain it to you?

These things are for properly educated engineers and scientists to understand, not low level validation techs and chaperones.

In fact, France reprocesses *other countries' nuclear waste* at La Hague as well as their own. They've reprocessed material from Germany, Belgium, and Japan. They've been doing it since 1995. Source: http://www.areva....ent.html

It's looking less and less likely that they're sending waste for reprocessing at this non-existent location in Russia. This appears to be another conspiracy theory.

Oh, and I was wrong; it's not reduced to one-tenth; they're claiming less than 4% of the waste is unreclaimable and unusable; that's about one-twenty-fifth. So the US is storing 25 times as much radioactive waste as we would be if we reprocessed. If you really cared about future generations, you'd be all over that.

ah well, you might check out the documentary (in which an areva manager claims 96% reprocessing - and is shown to be a liar by his own, russian business partners. The truth is 10% reprocessing - and that is done by the russians. as confirmed by them and video material). La Hague doesn't do anything (only on paper). It is just a waystation. No processing goes on there whatsoever. It's one of the biggest PR buildings in the world.

aa, that sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. Especially since it appears there is no "Swerensk." France has sent DU tailings from their front-end processing to Russia, and gotten back enriched uranium fuel; thousands of tons of it, actually. But that's from the front end, not the back end (waste disposal). Your claim is, unfortunately, apparently untrue. You're conflating depleted uranium tailings from the enrichment process with spent fuel; spent fuel is highly radioactive. Depleted uranium is not. In fact, depleted uranium is mostly U-238, which is fertile and can be converted to plutonium. After the enrichment process, it is extremely pure; the French use the hexafluoride and gaseous diffusion and this requires that it be extremely pure uranium (mixed U-235 and U-238) *before* processing begins.

Here's a little tip for spotting anti-nuke hysteria: when they start talking about how "dangerous" DU is, you have a hysteric.

In fact, DU is the least radioactive common isotope of uranium, with a half-life of 4.4 billion years.

Here's another tipoff you're talking to a hysteric; they talk about how long the waste stays radioactive. In fact, high radiation means a short half-life. There are no highly radioactive substances with long half-lives.

It's kind of like crank physics when they start talking about "resonance." Especially if it's got anything to do with water; water woo is the commonest woo out there. See "penta-water."

In fact, if you check it out, AGW denialism is another conspiracy theory that claims all scientists are in a conspiracy to conceal the truth.

This is just as blatant a lie as is the lie that responsible scientific organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists are mouthpieces for the nucular(sic) "complex" and everyone in them is lying. It's silliness.

I'm well aware of the real nature of HAARP; it's a scientific experiment to analyze the ionosphere, and to energize small portions of it to enhance the analysis. It's also, according to Wikipedia, a "target of conspiracy theorists," which La Hague also appears to be based on your behavior and antialias_physorg's.

I have single-sourced, deliberately misrepresented material from you and aa. I expect better of both of you.

Personally I'd be chagrined to be caught dispensing stuff like this. Have you no shame, sir? Confess and shrive yourself of this dishonesty. I understand you have serious concerns, and I agree they need to be addressed, but making up conspiracy theories about non-existent Russian towns and huge, expensive reprocessing plants that use equipment bought from many sources that aren't being used, with thousands of employees who aren't talking about it, is silliness. Let's try to stick to reality here.

Please get it straight who is arguing what. I have not entered into the Russian nonsense, nor am anti-AGW, I have an MS in the field. I did not claim spurious motives to HAARP. You see enemies everywhere.

And as far as HAARP being shut down, they found out what they wanted to know; they're done. Why spend more money? This is duh.

Please get it straight who is arguing what. I have not entered into the Russian nonsense, nor am anti-AGW, I have an MS in the field. I did not claim spurious motives to HAARP. You see enemies everywhere.

Straw man logical fallacy detected.

I said your tactics are identical to theirs, not that you believed HAARP is a conspiracy.

Now you're lying about what I said. This is where I usually press the ignore button. You are getting special grace. If you abuse it you're done, as far as me paying attention to you any more.

Still waiting for evidence that La Hague isn't reprocessing and everything's being sent to Russia, to the non-existent town of Swerensk. Noted that you're trying to change the subject away from this glaring inconsistency.

Except for those numbers they feed you, whatever LaHague does is not known to you. It is a state secret in France, and ripe for revelations of the real happenings behind the secrecy. If you assume they are not fudging the truth, fine. I do not, but make no accusations.

My contention is nuclear power is too unsafe to use, and the proponents cannot be trusted just because we are fallible, and the stakes are too high for failure. I got it from a lifetime looking into it, sometimes working with it.

If you want to promote nukes, fine, and I will continue to resist them with reason, but stop the broad-based attacks.

No conspiracy theory, France has its nukes under National Security. It is all secret. I think when all the secrets are out, we will find plenty of problems with their breeders. Just a hunch from being in the utility industry.

"Why didn't you look it up for yourself?" I said it because when I did, it was the first entry.

No conspiracy theory, France has its nukes under National Security. It is all secret. I think when all the secrets are out, we will find plenty of problems with their breeders. Just a hunch from being in the utility industry.

We're not discussing breeders. We're discussing reactors (including US reactors) that were refueled using MOX from La Hague.

"Why didn't you look it up for yourself?" I said it because when I did, it was the first entry.

"MOX from La Hague" may have been in Unit Three at Fukushima. Look it up. We got evidence of high Neutron flux several times, including the Cobalt 60 found at Fukushima Dai-ini, a few miles away, probably from a prompt criticality after the hydrogen explosion compressed sufficient fuel when Unit Three went up.

You claimed waste was shipped from La Hague to "Swerensk" (which appears not to exist) to be reprocessed by the Russians. In fact, it was not waste from La Hague, but the tailings from other plants that do enrichment, not reprocessing. It's depleted uranium, not nuclear waste. Quote:

Why didn't you look it up for yourself?

Quote:

It is a state secret in France

Now stop trying to squirm out of your lie.

I did not mention Swerensk.

You agreed with a "documentary" that did: Quote:

Why didn't you look it up for yourself?

Quote:

It is a state secret in France

Now stop trying to squirm out of your lie.

Stop confusing me with others!

I'm not.

Straw man fallacy detected. Lying detected.

Stop trying to lawyer your way out of it, gkam. You're as transparent as any other troll.

Come on, gkam, you've seen me take down AGW deniers using exactly these same arguments. Somehow you think I'm not going to notice the same tactics when you use them? Sorry, I'm not corrupt. And I object strenuously when someone assumes I am.

My god, MOX from La Hague actually WAS used in Unit Three. Where do you think they got it?

Why would you think it was a conspiracy? In truth, there is interest in exactly what they were doing there, and it is under contention. But the use of MOX in Unit Three was public information, as heralded by TEPCO.

"At TEPCO, we have loaded MOX fuel into Unit 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in August 2010, and are steadily working our way toward the implementation of plutonium-thermal power generation."

My god, MOX from La Hague actually WAS used in Unit Three. Where do you think they got it?

So? You're implicitly claiming it made it blow up. Is this like you ignoring the fact that the spent fuel was clad in zirconium just like the fuel inside the reactor, which you tried to claim was responsible for the hydrogen buildup?

The MOX fuel had no more to do with what happened than the zirconium cladding on the fuel rods inside the reactor vessel. It was the zirconium cladding on the spent fuel that caused the problem.

You're obfuscating again, gkam.

Schneib, I am just trying to tell you you are attacking me for the words of the other guy.

And I'm just pointing out that you're trying to support them, and then trying to deny responsibility for doing so. This is a dishonest act, gkam.

When I detect obfuscation, I detect dishonesty, and I won't tolerate it from anyone. It doesn't matter if you don't deny AGW, if you turn around and use the same crank physics AGW deniers do to make up fairy tales about nuclear power. You don't get a break for being right on one subject. You have to apply real skeptical reasoning to them all. It's a habit of thinking, not a way of lawyering.

If you think I'm right about La Hague and don't believe this unicorn story about nobody there doing any reprocessing and them shipping it to Russia, then say so, straight out, and don't challenge me on my search criteria and avoid the question.

You were so sure of "getting" the guy in your semantic stuff, you failed to notice you attacked the wrong guy. You ascribed completely wrong intentions and meanings to my posts, and used the words of aa or whoever as mine.

" A hydrogen explosion at the Fukushima No. 1 plant last March sent a 35-ton machine plunging into the spent-fuel pool of reactor 3, which uses highly dangerous mixed oxide fuel, Tokyo Electric has reported.

[...] The No. 3 reactor is the only one at the crippled power station that was powered by the plutonium-uranium MOX.

Tepco released a photograph that appears to show part of the machine, which used to hang directly above the 11.8-meter-deep pool and was used to insert and remove fuel rods, resting on storage racks for the fuel rods. [...]"